Valve getting serious about Steam for Linux

Mark Raby, 17th July 2012

It's been talked about multiple times before, but Steam for Linux might actually be close to a reality.

A new official blog has sprouted on Valve's servers, called Valve Linux. It boasts 11 developers with a mission of "strengthening the gaming scene on Linux, both for players and developers."

Valve is known for creating some of the most popular hardcore PC games, but its reach has been vastly extended thanks to its digital distribution platform Steam. It acts as a centralized hub for PC gamers of all stripes to download and get instant access to games from all kinds of publishers across all genres.

Work is now fully underway to bring that platform to the open-source operating system Linux.

"We’re just starting development and working with a single distribution is critical when you are experimenting, as we are. It reduces the variability of the testing space and makes early iteration easier and faster," Valve said.

Apparently the company has already managed to get Left 4 Dead 2, one of the most resource-heavy PC games, fully running on Ubuntu, a Linux standard.

"We want this to be a community of game developers, communicating with each other and talking about current efforts and future efforts in a powerfully creative environment," Valve wrote on its blog.